- This is what a scientist looks like – A great tumblr full of photos of scientists in their natural habitats. From Laika.
- Can the US Army embrace atheists? – The BBC interviews Justin Griffith. From Donnie.
- Support breast cancer screenings by buying science fiction books – In response to the Susan G. Komen foundation pulling its support of Planned Parenthood, John Scalzi is donating his profits from his books to Planned Parenthood.
- Study links low IQ to prejudice, racism, conservatism – From Charlene who says, “Easy to imagine the media-sharpened soundbite, “Are right wingers prejudiced because they’re stupid?”
- Cute Animal Friday! 22 baby coatis. Boys with beards and cats (ignore the hipsters, admire the kitties). And it’s not just cats that try to get into too-small boxes.
Is it just me or does that “conservatives are dumb” story have Evo Psych written all over it?
It’s chock full of fallacies; correlation equals causation and confirmation bias spring to mind, plus the fact that IQ tests have been shown to not show much of anything useful regarding intelligence.
As a raging liberal I would be happy to find out that conservatives are measurably dumber but I just don’t see it. There are too many factors not taken into account; geography, family structure, poverty vs. wealth, religiosity etc. for this to mean much. I don’t doubt that liberals and conservatives have actual brain differences (or alt least thought pattern differences), whether genetic, environmental, chemical, etc., and won’t be the least bit surprised when/if the actual trigger or triggers of liberalism are found but I don’t see any good reason to do anything but laugh at this idiotic little study and watch the conservatives get all red-faced and screechy while the liberals stand in the corner looking smug; which is pretty much what they do every day.
My thoughts exactly.
Not just you. I read it and thought it was a gross over-simplification. Also, didn’t some of the most intelligent people practice eugenics?
Even if there is a difference in brains we’ve shown that the human brain is incredibly plastic in ability to adapt so it’s not even necessarily the difference in the brain that caused the ideology but the reinforcement and ideology that cause the difference.
If you look at the actual research paper, it is not as full of bias as the HuffPo piece. The HuffPo piece was written to draw ads.
There are plausible mechanisms for there to be an actual causal correlation.
This video is all I have to say about those scientist pictures: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8FEhMxSSWw&feature=related